by Robert Mayer
“Go on,” Hersch said, when Klaus paused. “You’re awfully shy today, considering all you’ve done since.”
“Shut your mouth. I’m almost done. Then the Jew here is done.”
Sweating heavily, Meyer tried not to accept Klaus Fettmilch’s meaning. Surely this could not be happening to him. Where was he to run, where was he to hide, how was he to fight?
“The Kommandant ordered me to arrange the killing. But not to be seen doing it. I bought rat poison, found three boys who were willing. Gave them a key to the gate.”
“For money?” Meyer asked, nervously, not knowing what difference it made, not knowing if he was speaking of Solomon Gruen’s murder or his own.
“For fun,” Klaus said, looking directly at Meyer, who saw madness in his eyes, as if he, too, were uncertain which murder they were talking about, the one fifteen years ago or one he would soon commit.
“Two of them held him, forced his mouth open. The third poured poisoned milk down his throat. He squirmed for a few minutes, then died. If anyone had seen from their windows, it was just some hooligans. Who never would be found.”
“The boys Guttle saw outside the gate,” Meyer murmured.
“Which, thank God, she told the Rabbi about,” Hersch said.
At first Meyer felt the story made no sense. He had met the informant at Brendel’s Café just the other day. The bookseller Gluck. Then he understood. When he was arrested, Solomon Gruen implicated Leutnant Gruber in order to protect the bookseller and the real source.
Had he been forced by the Leutnant into disgusting sex? Or had the Schul-Klopper been using Gruber all along, as an emergency cover story if needed? Surrendering his body to protect the lane? To keep the bookseller in place?
Meyer turned to Hersch. “I owe you a strong apology. I owe you more than that.”
Klaus pulled his sword from the earth. He wiped the blade on his trousers. Facing Meyer, he spoke to Hersch. “Is that what this was about? An apology? You Jews are madder than I thought. You create the great plague, wiping out half the people of Europe, but I have to go through this nonsense for an apology?”
“What are you talking about?” Hersch said.
“The Black Death, of course. When you Jews poisoned the wells”.
“We caused the plague? You’re meshuganah,” Hersch said.
“Who told you such things?” Meyer asked.
“Who told me? No one told me, everyone knows. I heard it at school. Among the Constables. It’s not a secret. My great grandfather, at least, was one who wouldn’t stand for it. He led a raid into the Judengasse to kill the Jews.”
“Who fought back well,” Meyer said. “The Fettmilch riots — that was your grandfather? The Frankfurt council did not agree with him. He was arrested, tried, and hanged.”
“The council were fools. But today, thanks to Helmut, or Hersch here, I can take my revenge, in my family’s name. I can hardly let you live, to spread what I just told you. The Polizei Kommandant — he’s still the same — would not be pleased. As for me, I was only following orders. But when the dripping head of that Jewish thief was stolen from the Fahrtor gate, and smuggled into the Judengasse, all the guards, including me, were fired. The Kommandant was afraid there might be another collaborator. We were told to leave Frankfurt and not return.”
Klaus was babbling on, as if the impending sight of Jewish blood had loosened his tongue. “I assume the Polizei know what l’ve been doing. They could find me, if the wrong word got about. So you see, Jew, you have to die. Even your friend Hersch here has agreed to that.”
Grinning, Fettmilch ran a finger along the blade of his sword. Meyer backed away. In two steps his shoulder blades were pressed against the castle wall of stone. He looked at Hersch, who had not stirred. He thought to start saying the She’ma, but refused to accept his imminent death. Images of Guttle and the children flashed through his mind in an unspoken visual prayer. For him to die here, now — this could not be Yahweh’s plan.
One of the horses whinnied, another answered.
“Enough talk,” Klaus said. “Now you will die, Jew — in the name of Fettmilch!”
He raised his sword parallel to the ground. Meyer twisted and cringed, trying to cover himself with his arms. Klaus was about to lunge forward, to plunge the sword into Meyer’s bowels, when with a sudden swift motion Hersch holding his heavy pistol by its long barrel swung the iron grip with a crunching thud into the side of Klaus’s head. The sword fell to the earth as Klaus collapsed, fell on his side, twisted onto his back, lay still. Meyer dropped to his knees on the gray earth, turned his head, pressed his face to the stone wall, as if uncertain if he were alive or dead.
Hersch stuck his pistol in the waistband of his trousers, lifted Klaus’s sword, leaned it against a wall. Meyer, on his haunches, was breathing evenly, trying to recover control.
“Danke schoën,” he said, hoarsely.
“I didn’t do it for you. I need you alive.”
“You need me?”
“What do you think this was, a game? You know the truth now. From the killer’s mouth. You will return to the Judengasse and tell what happened. Tell them that Hersch Liebmann is not a murderer, and never was. You will make sure that everyone knows.”
“Of course. I could do no less.”
“Good. You owe your life to that.”
Meyer nodded, used protruding stones from the wall to pull himself to his feet. His knees still were shaky.
“I’ve hated you for years, for accusing me,” Hersch said. “But you didn’t deserve to die for it. Not by the sword of scum like this.” He kicked the boot of the fallen Klaus, who moaned, turned his head slightly, then lay inert.
“He’s alive,” Meyer said. “I thought you had killed him.”
“I didn’t want to kill him.”
Meyer nodded, wiped pale stone dust from his beard.
“That, you shall do.”
Not comprehending, or trying not to, Meyer looked at Hersch. “You expect me to kill him? Surely not. I couldn’t do such a thing.”
“Why not? He’s lying at your feet. It’s time you dirtied your hands, like the rest of us.”
“Adonai forbids it. The Sixth Commandment. Thou shalt not murder.”
“The punishment for murder is death. Is that not what the Talmud says? If we must never kill, who is to put a murderer to death?”
“The Torah does not prohibit killing. Only murder — unjustified killing.”
“Surely killing is permitted to defend oneself.”
“It is.”
“He just tried to kill you.”
“But now he lies defenseless. Weaponless.”
Hersch stepped to the wall, lifted Klaus’s sword. “Plunge it into his chest, or his bowels — as he tried to do to you.” He handed the sword to Meyer, who did not grasp it but let it fall to the earth, as if he were being handed a venomous snake.
“You think we should let him live?” Hersch asked. “So that when he finds me, he can plunge his sword into my back for what I just did? So that he can come to the Judengasse and slaughter you. Or your wife? Or your children? After first raping them? Do you think he won’t do that, after what he told you? After I cracked his skull?”
Meyer closed his eyes, not knowing what to think, what to feel. Hersch pulled his pistol from his trousers. “Do I have to force you to do it? Do I have to threaten to kill you if you don’t? Is that what’s necessary? Here, take the pistol.” He pressed it into Meyer’s hands. He spread his own arms wide, so he was defenseless. “There. Now you have a choice. You can kill me, if you prefer. A fellow Jew. Who has not murdered anyone. Or you can kill Klaus Fettmilch. Who murdered the Schul-Klopper, as he just told you. Who rapes women and young girls whenever he feels the urge. He raped my woman five days ago. I would have killed him on the spot, but I wanted him alive, to speak his confession to you. I knew he would die today. I saved your life so you could take his.”
“Why not kill himself yourself?” Meyer said
, managing somehow to keep his voice strong.
“Because there is sweet revenge in making you do it. You accused me falsely of murder. Now you can see what it feels like to truly kill.”
“So that you can accuse me? Is that your plan?”
“I’ll never speak of what happens here. I don’t need anyone else to know. It’s enough that I will know, and you will know. Perhaps it won’t be much of a burden for you to carry. The bastard deserves to die.”
Meyer looked at the pistol in his hand, its long barrel, felt the heavy weight of it in his palms, on his fingers. He never thought that in his life he would even touch such a thing. Is this, he wondered, what the scales of justice weigh?
“Use the pistol, if you’re squeamish about the sword. Point it at his chest and squeeze the trigger. Look, he’s opening his eyes. It won’t be safe to let him live.”
“Thou shalt not murder,” Meyer said, shaking his head from side to side.
He raised the pistol with both hands, pointed it at Klaus’s chest. His hands were not steady. He turned to look at Hersch. Their brown eyes met. Neither turned away. Perhaps this is just a test, Meyer thought, perhaps there is no powder in the pistol, or no ball. A test, like Abraham and Isaac. I will squeeze the trigger and hear only a dull click. Then Hersch will load the weapon and do the killing. From the Schul-Klopper’s death it was Hersch, among the living, who had suffered most; it is Hersch who needs revenge.
The thoughts flew through his mind in an instant, were displaced by others like a swarm of gnats, which restored an itchy rage in him — the slight by Wilhelm at the coronation ball, the hateful Herr Goethe. Then another vision, from long ago — the scene Guttle had described to him one night long after they were married, of what had happened the night of the Schul-Klopper’s death, when she had run by mistake to the south gate. How Kapitän Klaus had tried to lure her outside to rape her. What if he had had succeeded? How would Guttle have been affected? Would she have carried Klaus’s child? Would she have come to hate all men? Would she have turned Meyer’s troth aside? Would she still be joyful on their sheets? If the guard had succeeded in raping her, their six children might not even exist!
A question sprung from his lips without anticipation. “Does he rape girls who are fifteen years old?”
“He likes virgins. That’s his favorite age. Though he’s not always picky.”
Hersch’s final word was obliterated by an explosion of noise and dust as Meyer, while still looking at Hersch, squeezed the trigger of the pistol, with or without intent, and the small stone room recoiled into its own deafening echoes. The backward force of the weapon jolted Meyer’s wrist and elbow, wrenched the long pistol from his hand. As it dropped to the earth Meyer turned his head and looked at Klaus, lying in the dirt, and saw through a haze of gunpowder the former guard’s chest and face bubbling with blood, the ground around him splattered red, as if the pistol ball had torn through his ribs and exploded his heart. His eyes were rotated back in his head, only the whites showing. Before Meyer could be sick he turned away and ducked through the opening in the stone wall and out into the shade, and walked to the post to which the horses were tied and held it with both hands for support. A songbird, he somehow noticed, was warbling in a nearby tree.
Hersch came out and approached the horses, holding his pistol and Klaus’s sword. He returned the sword to its sheath, which hung from the saddle on the black stallion, and laid the pistol on a rock; he would clean it and load it before leaving. “You see. It wasn’t so difficult.”
Wiping his moist upper lip and mustache with his handkerchief, Meyer turned his head and spoke. “Your word is good? You will never mention this?”
“You accused me of a murder, when I was innocent. I will never say a word, though you are guilty. What remains is for you to ponder who is the better man.”
Meyer lowered his arms and unhooked the reins of the roan from the post. The white droppings of a large bird splattered the ground beside him. He looked up but saw nothing except blue sky. I killed a man but nature didn’t notice. Feeling dazed, he climbed onto the carriage seat. His ears felt plugged from the resounding shot.
“Will you be returning to the Judengasse?” he said, without looking at Hersch.
“Who can tell? First there’s a woman I need to find.”
Meyer Amschel flicked the reins, the roan stirred, the large wooden wheels of the carriage began to turn and creak.
“You forgot your money,” Hersch called.
Meyer heard but did not respond. He flicked the reins again and the horse left the shade of the castle wall and turned onto the narrow path down which they had come. The
heat of the sun bore down. Meyer wriggled out of his coat. As he did he saw that his white stockings were splattered with spots of red; he would have to stop and change his clothes and bury the stockings before he reached the post exchange half way to Frankfurt, where he would spend the night. The horse moved through the welcome cool of the copse of trees, then, guided by Meyer’s pull, turned south onto the main road. Wiping his sweaty forehead with his shirt sleeve, Meyer tried to block from his mind the ragged red image of Klaus Fettmilch’s exploded heart. He couldn’t, and leaned over the side of the carriage and vomited, pulling the horse to a stop. He climbed down and knelt in the grass beside the road and vomited more, until his sides and his back hurt from the effort. When he was done he sat beneath a tree beside the carriage to gather his strength. Before leaving Kassel he had filled an earthen jar with drinking water, and he used the water now to rinse the residue of vomit from his mouth. The odor left, but the memory of blood remained. The smell of gunpowder still filled his nostrils. The belief that from all Hersch had told him, Klaus Fettmilch deserved to die, did not stop his hands from trembling. He tried to tell himself he had not meant to pull the trigger, that he was looking at Hersch at the time, that his hand had simply contracted in anger with the pistol pointed at Klaus.
Though he never would be put on trial, would a jury believe such a story? Of course not! He spat the taste of blood into the road.
Would he have squeezed the trigger had Guttle never told him of her encounter with Klaus that night at the south gate? He didn’t know. But Klaus had only been frightening her. Had he intended to rape her, he would have seduced her out the gate without mentioning barter. He recalled how innocent Guttle had looked earlier that evening, running into the schul and hugging Izzy. And how defiant. The night he had fallen for her. He felt now as if Guttle had been at his side in the castle. But Guttle would not have fired the pistol.
The sound of rippling water reached Meyer’s ears. Either the river had curved back toward the road, or the road had sought out the river. He walked the roan through sloping grass to the fast-flowing Fulda and let her drink. He washed his hands in the river. He washed them again. Pulling off his blood-pocked stockings he wound them tight in a ball and dug a hole with his hands in the mud at the river’s edge and buried them. From his trunk in the carriage he pulled out another pair, the silk ones he had worn to the coronation four days earlier. To put them on he sat on a rock near a clear, shallow pool where the river had overflowed. Glimpsing the still reflection of a tree limb in the pool, he knelt beside it, leaned over — and was startled by what he saw. In the shallow pool he saw the reflection of white-bearded Moses peering back at him. Fascinated, he stared at the ancient prophet, until he found in the water his own dark eyes, his own full lips, his own shorter beard, but white now instead of brown; it was not Moses he was looking at, but himself in old age. Why was Yahweh showing him this now? He ran his fingers through the water, disrupting the image. When the ripples settled, the white-bearded face still was there. Suddenly he was overcome with terrible grief for what he had done; the awful weight of the killing struck him with a crushing force; had he not already been on his knees he would have fallen to them. Tears trickled down his cheeks, dissolved into his beard.
Why had he not thrown down the pistol, as he had thrown down the sword? Would He
rsch really have killed him? He felt certain the answer was no; he would have killed Fettmilch. But he had not thought of that, in the moment. In the moment, he, Meyer Amschel Rothschild, whatever the tangled reasons, must have wanted to kill.
He sat on his haunches, dipped his hand in the pool, wiped his eyes, his cheeks — and felt grit on his fingers. He looked at his hand, stroked his beard; his hand came away with a residue of powder. Understanding, he leaned over the pool, cupped his hands, splashed water onto his face, rubbed away the gunpowder that had been assaulting his nostrils, that had whitened his whiskers. When he peered again into the water the image he saw was of himself, his beard its usual brown: the ambitious court agent, forty-one years old, husband, father, dealer in antiquities.
Standing shakily, he let his eye follow the sparkling river as it curled around a bend. Tormented, he tried to ponder the future. First, he would do what was fair and just for Hersch. As soon as he reached the lane, he would tell the true story of the death of the Shul-Klopper. He would tell it everywhere, from the north gate to the south, from the synagogue to the Café, like a prophet of old. If he withheld salacious details, out of respect for the dead, they were not so important.
Of the murder in the castle ruins he would not speak. Not to Guttle. Not to the children. Not to anyone. Only Yahweh would know.
“I did what I was told,” Fettmilch had said.
It was not an adequate defense. Not for the Gentile, not for himself. Who was he, neither judge nor jury, to wield the sword of justice — a terrible, bloody justice, stained and irrevocable?
Thou shalt not murder. Now he was in his heart, and would always be, one thing above all else: a man who had disobeyed God.
48
On Sunday, the second day of classes at the Moses Mendelssohn Academy for Girls, Guttle’s antagonists sputtered remarks as she passed, but there were only half as many as on the first day; none of the leaders had returned. Guttle was pleased — but an ominous feeling settled in her gut. Why had they surrendered so easily? It was not like them.